After the past two years of dealing mainly with the mini cameras, we now
have in our position a giant. Roughly 9X8X5 inches,
which is like one of the old BuckeyeCam cameras in size.
This camera is built in a very heavy duty Pelican boxes
and the inside boards are all industrial in appearance.
The case color is a flat OD green in color. It will take
a serious strap or cable to hang this camera because it
comes in at about 8 pounds. There is two case hardened
eye bolts (one each side) for security cables to run
through and for mounting. The front displays the PIR
sensor lens and camera lens surrounded by the array in
the Leaf River 3BU style. There is a removable
articulating stub antenna about 8 inches long mounted
about 4 inches from the PIR lens. There is an external
charging (panel) port on the left side of the camera.
The unit came with its associated solar panel (optional)
and pre charged ready to go to the woods so we will not
have to go through the full set up as normal.

This camera not only will send the pictures to your phone and computer
(not internet site based) by cellular systems it will
also include GPS data and through supplied software
display an aerial of the property where it is deployed.
We are assuming that it would also do the same if it
were stolen and turned on in another location. This data
is transmitted at a rate of every 30 seconds per photo
at the 640X480 resolution. Motion sensing is adjustable
out to 80 feet. The mail protocol is SMTP/POP3 &
FTP. Each photo contains time/date and battery level.
Time lapse mode is possible. Trigger times are
advertized as being about 1 second and delay times can
be programmed. Once the supplied disk is viewed on the
computer the settings all come in view and can be gone
through and set. All this data will be gone over once
Anthony has begun his phase of the evaluation.

I
tried to get things arranged in one of my light boxes
and it was just a pure pain in the butt doing this. I am
just not use to cameras this large and my setup is a
little small so I apologize for the pictures not being
up to par and I had to fold the antenna over so the full
length could be viewed in relation to the camera.

03-26-2011 Update:
Today we performed the trigger testing using the default
settings. The Trigger time setting in the software
was left at the .8 setting. A setting of 1.0 or
less is stated to produce photos with a pinkish tint to
them. The trigger times with this setting turned
out to be around 1.82 seconds for with and without
flash. The sensing at the default sensing setting
(adjusted by tuning a POT which we did not want to
change) was up to 45 feet at 60 degrees. The day
range test revealed a pinkish tint in a wide angle
(fish-eye) lens style. Keep in mind that we are in the
maximum resolution which is 640x480.

03-27-2011 update: With everything set up on the
bench and a week of going over all the material in my
spare time, just to see just how parallel this camera
was to previously tested systems. We twisted this and
adjusted that and pushed this button and in a few
minutes we started to receive E mails. I know that
sounds a little far fetched but it is basically true.
The set up procedure for us was just to pull the
supplied thumb drive, plug it into the computer, run the
Raptor configuration software, add our email addresses
to the list and click the save button and very shortly
the pictures started to arrive. We must also say that
this is a test unit that had already been deployed in
the field so there was no mystery. We also had good
contact with the PIX people that were Johnny on the spot
to answer questions. The transmitted pictures are
640X480 in size and my first thought as the first
picture arrived is that it seemed as though the camera
lens expands the view and has no zoom at all. The
distances as seen in the picture appear to be greater
than they actually are. The most I can say is that it
does work and was easy to do. It took less than an hour
to set up and understand. Trigger times came in the 1.8
second range and is adjustable according to the
instructions. You will see that about everything about
this camera is adjustable and can be managed through
programming. The day range pictures came out clear and
the night range pictures were also very readable.
Because of the lack of any type of zoom the subjects in
the picture look very small. The 8 plate zoom was
readable but because of the resolution was somewhat
fuzzy. We will do more today providing this big storm
that is on top of us right now moves on off the coast.

03-29-2011
update: When we moved from the day/flash range
to an area to capture some sample pictures. We ran into
difficulties and the camera quit sending pictures. We
checked with the company and they felt that we had not
given the camera enough down time (rest) prior to
booting it back up. They say we need at least two
minutes from shut down to the time that the camera is
brought back up. This seemed to work and yesterday we
did get some day pictures but over night we did not
receive any more. This camera also is equipped with a
built in GPS which reports its location along with the
picture. We have yet been able to get this feature to
work. The camera GPS does not seem to want to acquire
the necessary three satellites that is needed to report
the location. It is felt that being that our area is
heavy canopy (winter without leaves) is the reason for
this function not to work. We will later move to an open
area to see if we can at least get a real report as to
the GPS location.

The next area
that was a little troubling was the way that the report
(GPS data plus picture) is received. There is a lengthy
report ahead of each picture. Being this camera is
capable of taking a picture a minute and transmitting
it, it is possible to receive a large sequence of
pictures in a short period of time. This requires that
you scroll past each data section in order to view the
picture. The time and other data is the only thing that
changes per picture so most users will only want to just
scroll picture to picture without having to re read each
data section. This all works very well but it is only my
opinion and desire to get to as many pictures one after
the other as I can to see that prize that this camera
has captured.

03-30-2011 update: Another day of good
service and this product has shown that it does work
very well. We have still failed to make the GPS function
work and it has been determined that there is an issue
with the internal GPS antenna because the diagnostics
seem to reflect that to be the area. Being this camera
has the wide angle lens and the subjects seem to be
smaller that they actually are, we decided to move the
corn piles closer to the camera. This proved to be a big
plus in the day pictures but we experienced almost total
IR burn in the night pictures. We will say that a fair
distance for the target animal during night captures
should be in the range of about 15 feet and then there
is no IR burn. We got a pretty good load of pictures
last night and about half or better were whiteout on the
closer subjects due to the IR burn. The distant subjects
came clear and sharp.

04-05-2011 update: This camera has
continued to give us good service but I have a major
peeve that seems to keep on being repeated. The PIR does
a great job sensing and the camera just keeps on taking
pictures and the unit sends them to our computers. Here
is the hang up that has happened since day one. That is
the water on the lens issue that collects and stays
there. We installed a small metal hood but we are still
having the same problem. We had a bit of a storm last
night and we also had a good group of visitors to the
area which the only proof of that was a leg here or an
ear there in the pictures with the rest being covered up
by water drops hanging on to the lens. I know this is a
very small problem but never the less it is aggravating.
Once we have a little sun the water will dry and on our
next visit to the camera we can clean the remaining
residue from the lens. I would like to see a small stick
on hood designed for this camera to help prevent this.
The only other camera that we recently tested that had
the same problem was the Plot Watcher which seemed to
have a water magnet for a main camera lens. I made a
small clear hood just above the lens and that worked
great and prevented the reoccurrence of the water on the
lens problem. I will look and see if I can find a
solution for this that is an easy fix.

04-06-2011 update: As I tried to get
through some more of my extra strength home brew coffee,
I dreamed up a little hood for this camera. I took a
little piece of clear plastic 1/8 inch and cut it in a
half circle to fit just above the array opening and just
below the PIR opening. I then took a part of a clear
plastic cup and cut it to resemble a hood and mixed up
some clear epoxy and stuck them together (see picture).
I then just took some double sided tape and fixed it to
the back to stick it to the front of the camera. We will
see how well this works. We are hoping for no ill
effects due to reflections. Next we have been monitoring
the cell transitions and have determined that when the
signal is low (low bar count) it takes longer to send
each picture than when the signal strength is high. This
correlates to variable battery life depending on which
location the user may choose. Even though the battery
life is great as far as we can determine so far, this
may be a consideration when choosing the cameras
deployment site. Now if you choose to use the solar
panel, none of this will have an impact on operation.

04-07-2011 update: This is just a short
note to add more information in relation to the hood we
built. We did not take into account the wide angle lens
of this camera and a bit of the new roof could be seen
in the pictures which meant we had to trim about ¾ inch
off the end to prevent this but the length still seems
to work well. It is hard to simulate a rain storm with a
cup of water but it gave us an idea that we are on the
right track.

04-11-2011 update: I went ahead and
designed another hood for this camera because we were
getting a bit of reflection from the corrugations in the
plastic. This hood is a bit of plastic down spout and a
piece of clear plastic to hold the double stick tape. I
used a little epoxy to put it together and we will see
how this one works. See the picture of how this one
looks on the camera. I will report as to how this one
works.

05-04-2011 update: We put this system
through its operation and during this first outing we
got just over 400 pictures on the first charge. We felt
that this may have been an error so we performed a new
charge and double checked the battery to ensure that it
was actually charged to over 12 volts. We had picked a
great location down in our country testing area to
redeploy and again run the battery test. Once arrived at
this new location we searched for a location that had
adequate cell service for the ATT system but we were not
able to use that area due to no signal service. We moved
to the high ground away from the swamp and even then had
to get up the tree to acquire enough signal to register
on the camera. This area has not near the activity as
our first chosen location but it is in the wild and
several tests with Anthony there and me on the computer
here we determined that we had communications by way of
his version cell phone and that the system was going to
work. Since that time we finally have received about a
dozen pictures and many had the deer looking directly at
the camera for some reason, but it proved that we did
have an operating system. We have found out through
communications with Pix that when the signal strength is
marginal the camera has to work harder and this may
cause the battery life to be somewhat shorter.

There are other things that we need to say about this
system. Every morning the system will send you a status
report which contains the GPS location and all pertinent
camera data. The system will shut itself down once
battery level gets to a certain threshold. The current
Raptor systems also have a WiFi option available. There
is also a external PIR wireless trigger available for
this system. There are various mounting methods
incorporated into the case depending on deployment
needs. This system can also be programmed to do time
lapse operations over this cell system. All
communications can be received either on your cell phone
or E mail receivers. Alternatively the system can be
configured to deliver the photos via ftp to a server.
A programmable time schedule of operation can also be
accomplished through programming. The prepaid cell SIM
card no contract (pay-as-you-go) can be used for this
operation.

We will leave the system up and running on this current
charge until it shuts down and make that report and we
will bring this review to a close.

05-24-2011 update: This camera ran 18 days
on a full charge and took 229 pictures. The GPS began to
work so the original issue was more than likely related
to the heavy forest canopy. Please remember this last
deployment was in an area where we had a marginal signal
(1/5 = poor) so the camera had to work much harder
(longer) to transmit the pictures. This test was also
performed without the solar panel which would have given
a much longer time. We had the panel but we needed to
know what the battery life would be without the optional
panel. Over all, the camera worked well and gave us a
good string of pictures. Later on this fall we will be
testing the next generation with some new upgrades. One
thing to note is that our first battery life test
resulted in twice the number of photos transmitted as
our signal was double the strength (3/5). So, a
full signal could mean as many as 1000 pictures
transmitted without solar panel. As
of now we are closing this review.

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